The present disclosure relates generally to industrial machines, such as tipped articulated trucks, which may be designed to carry heavy loads in a carriage located at the rear of the vehicle. These articulated trucks may be operated substantially in road construction, mining fields, or in any other environment where it is necessary to move material from one location to another. Performance increases may be achieved when a moving element, for instance an ejector blade, is used in the unloading process to better control removal of the material from the carriage.
These machines have to be extremely reliable in operation, since a disorder would hinder the workflow significantly. When these machines are operated in locations where a service for the vehicle is either not present or remotely located, it can take a significant amount of time before they can be repaired or replaced.
However, these industrial machines may be subject to extensive wear and tear, due to the large loads they may carry and move in the carriage and to the unfavorable environment conditions, since construction or building sites are dirty environments where dust and dirt can quickly intrude in all connected moving parts, such as sliders, joints and hinges. Impurities intruded in a hinge, roller or piston can significantly interrupt the operation of the machine because of the increased friction between the elements. To remove the impurities the parts may need to be disassembled, which makes the machine inoperative for a certain time, a fact that can have significant impact, for example, on a road construction project.
Therefore, many parts may need to be greased regularly to ensure proper operation of the machine and avoid that certain moving elements become stuck or subjected to excessive friction. Conventional greasing systems, comprising a pump and a network of fixed lines distributing the lubricant to fixed lubrication points and usually operated electrically by the machine operator, are well known in the state of the art. Such known greasing systems supply lubricants to stationary points on the vehicle, such as the hinges connecting the ejection carriage to the chassis of an industrial machine. When an articulated truck with a movable blade element is involved, the moving parts of the blade element must typically be lubricated very frequently, for the blade element to operate properly. The lubrication process is carried out by the operator of the machine, who manually provides the lubricants to the moving parts. To do so, the operator must stop the machine, climb on the chassis to reach the blade element and its respective lubrication points and then apply the lubricant. Such activity interrupts the workflow significantly.
An alternative known way of providing a lubricant to the moving parts of a movable blade element consists in using an electrically operated pump applying lubricant to the lubrication points via a network of hoses, the electric pump being fixed at a fixed point of the machine and the lubrication lines lying between fixed and mobile parts of the vehicle.
It is an aim of the current disclosure to overcome or alleviate some or all of the problems associated with the prior art.